Wednesday, November 13. 2013
This year's conference season is coming to an end for me soon – I have three more events to go before I can enjoy the Christmas holidays:
On 2013-11-20, I'll be at the DOAG Konferenz in Nuremberg (Germany), where I will talk about the following topics (in German):
I've also submitted a proposal for an "Unconference" (or BOF) about Oracle Linux - this will take place on the same day, at 12:00-13:00.
From Nuremberg I will travel directly to Munich, where I will speak about Oracle Linux at a Private Cloud mit Oracle Linux und Oracle VM Seminar on Thursday, 2013-11-21. If you would like to learn more about how to set up and manage your private cloud infrastructure using Oracle Linux, Oracle VM and Oracle Enterprise Manager, this event gives you an opportunity to talk to customers who share their experiences and experts that can provide additional background information. This is a free event, registration via the event web site is required.
Early in December (2013-12-02/2013-12-03), I'll be attending the UKOUG Tech Conference in Manchester (UK) speaking about the following topic:
Here's a short recap of some past events I attended earlier this year:
On 2013-08-24/2013-08-25 I attended FrOSCon 8 in St. Augustin (Germany). Oracle was a silver sponsor and exhibitor — I was there to represent Oracle Linux at our booth. It was really nice to meet many people that I had not seen for quite a while. FrOSCon was well organized (as usual), the only bummer was that the weather did not cooperate and the social event could not take place outside.
2013-09-22/2013-09-25 - Oracle OpenWorld 2013 - San Francisco (US). In addition to attending numerous meetings with customers, I also contributed to the event with the following sessions:
Wednesday, August 7. 2013
I just published the second part of a blog post series about Linux Containers on the OTN Garage blog (where a lot of my recent blogging takes place nowadays) — check it out if you would like to get an introduction and some quick examples on how to get started with this technology on Oracle Linux (and other Linux distributions that support Linux Containers, of course):
German versions of these articles are also available from the OLIVI_DE - Oracle LInux und VIrtualisierung blog:
We also recorded a short whiteboard session about this topic a while ago — the video is available from the Oracle Linux YouTube channel: Linux Containers Explained
Tuesday, September 18. 2012
It's that time of the year again — the summer holidays are over and the conference season starts!
I'm very excited to be at Oracle Open World in San Francisco again, where I will pretty busy. On Saturday and Sunday I will attend MySQL Connect, primarily to man the Oracle Linux booth in the exhibition area. But I hope to catch some of the talks as well (I shared my favourite sessions with Keith Larson from the MySQL team in this interview). During Open World, I will help out manning the Oracle Linux demo pods in the exhibition grounds in Moscone South, where we will showcase Oracle Linux with Ksplice and related technologies. I also have a joint presentation with two of our customers about "Top Technical Tips for Automatic and Secure Oracle Linux Deployments" and I've prepared two hands-on lab sessions "Oracle Linux Storage Management with LVM and Device-Mapper" and "Oracle Linux Package Management: Configuring and Enabling Services". Both hands-on lab sessions will actually be run twice. The lab sessions were quite popular last year, I look forward to moderating these again.
In November, I'll be at the DOAG Conference in Nuremberg, to give a joint presentation with my colleague Manuel Hossfeld about "Oracle Linux - best practices and benefits" (in German). We also plan to request a slot for a BOF/Unconference about Linux, I'm curious about the feedback and discussions that will arise during these sessions.
If you happen to be around these conferences and would like to meet, please get in touch!
Thursday, January 5. 2012
Reposting of what I wrote on the Oracle Linux Blog:
Just a friendly reminder: this year too, we'll continue this series of free one-day events.
OTN Sys Admin Days are like OTN's Developer Days, but we focus on the Sys Admin with two parallel, hands-on Oracle Solaris and Oracle Linux tracks. These are live classroom events and you'll need to bring your own laptop to follow the practical exercises that we will go through in a VirtualBox environment.
The Linux track will cover topics like package management with RPM and yum, storage management with LVM2 and Linux RAID as well as learning the basics of managing the Btrfs file system. The Solaris track will cover the ZFS file system, Solaris containers and security (roles, SMF).
The next OTN Sys Admin Day will take place in Salt Lake City (UT), on January 18th, 8:00am-4:00pm.
Attendance is free, but a registration is required – reserve your spot now by following this link! We look forward to your participation.
Wednesday, September 14. 2011
Last week we concluded our first Oracle Technology Network Sys Admin Day in Sacramento (CA). Well, it was actually the second Sys Admin Day, but the first one that had two parallel tracks of sessions about both Oracle Linux and Oracle Solaris.
I helped preparing for the event by creating the Linux lab handbook as well as the VirtualBox appliance of Oracle Linux 6.1 that was used for the exercises. Unfortunately I could not be there in person, but it would have been pointless for me to go on an intercontinental flight just for one day.
From the feedback we've received so far, the attendees really enjoyed the event and were positively surprised about the depth and quality of the practical hands-on lab sessions.
If you've missed the first one and happen to live somewhere in the Seattle area, you have another chance to attend OTN sysadmin day: we'll be hosting another one on Thursday, September 22nd at The Westin Seattle (1900 5th Ave., Seattle, WA 98101). Again, attendance is free, all you need to bring is your own laptop with VirtualBox installed. We'll provide the rest. Space is limited — you can review the agenda and register here!
Friday, September 2. 2011
In my last post, I provided a short review of what I have been working on in the past few months since I joined the Oracle Linux team. Now it's time for a summary of upcoming events! Looking forward, I already have a few more things lined up:
I'll attend and speak at the Oracle OpenWorld 2011 conference in San Francisco in October. I have a joint session with Chris Mason titled Overview: New Features in Oracle Linux 6 where we'll cover the latest developments. I have another joint presentation with my colleague Rob Young from the MySQL product management team titled Using MySQL with Other Oracle Products - this one will give an overview how MySQL has been integrated with the other products in the Oracle portfolio.
At OpenWorld, I'll also do some booth duty (find me at the Oracle Linux demo pods) and I'll also give a number of hands-on lab sessions:
For these labs, I created an Oracle Linux 6.1 VirtualBox appliance and wrote a 70+ page lab manual. I'll be around, aiding the attendees through these exercises.
By the way, a sneak preview of these hands-on labs will be available prior to OpenWorld as well: they are part of an upcoming series of the OTN sysadmin days, free one-day events that will provide practical workshops on both Oracle Solaris and Oracle Linux. We have three days scheduled so far - the first one of these will come up faily soon:
On November 15-17, I'll be at the DOAG 2011 Konferenz + Ausstellung in Nuremberg, Germany. I'll give two presentations (in German):
I'll also hold an "Unconference" (or BOF) about Oracle Linux and the UEK together with Manuel Hossfeld, one of our Linux/OVM consultants.
And finally, I'll be giving a talk about "Oracle Linux and the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel: Status Update and Overview" at the UK Oracle User Group Conference 2011 in Birmingham (UK) on December 6.
If you happen to be at any of these events, please let me know if you'd like to meet!
Despite my best intentions, I haven't posted on this blog for a while, which is a shame! I've become busy writing on so many other places since I moved into my new role in the Oracle Linux product management team in April. I've learned a lot and I am feeling quite at home here! The team is excellent and very nice to work with — I am slowly getting the "Big Picture".
But even though I've been neglecting this blog, there are a lot of things that are publicly visible and document some of my activites:
I've created two podcasts for the Oracle Linux podcasts:
In addition to working the @ORCL_Linux Twitter account and FaceBook page, I've been blogging on the Oracle Linux blog:
From time to time, I'm a guest blogger on the OTN Garage blog:
I also created new content and updated pages on the main Oracle web site and the Oracle Technology Network (OTN):
I've been traveling a bit as well and attended a few conferences where I spoke about Oracle Linux (and MySQL):
I probably forgot a few things in my reflection of the past few months, but these were some of the highlights.
Check out my followup blog post on what I'm up to in the coming weeks and months!
Thursday, June 16. 2011
fisl12 is likely the largest free and open source software event in Latin America. This year, it takes place in Porto Alegre, Brazil, from June 29th to July 2nd. Oracle is a gold sponsor of the event and I will attend it as a speaker. I feel honoured and excited to be there – for me it will be the first visit to the South American continent.
They already have over 3000 registered attendees, so this definitely is going to be a great conference. There is quite a number of well-known names on the speaker roster and I look forward to meeting a lot of familar faces there.
The agenda is still under development but quite impressive already – too bad I don't speak Portuguese...
I will be giving an introduction and status update to Oracle Linux and as our virtualization technologies Oracle VM and Oracle VM VirtualBox. Other Oracle speakers at fisl12 include:
- Davi Arnaut - MySQL Engineering
- Roger Brinkley - Java Evangelists and the Community Leader for the Mobile & Embedded Community
- John Ceccarelli - Middleware Engineering
- Anil Gaur - VP of Java Platform, Enterprise Edition, and GlassFish Server in the Fusion Middleware Group
- Arun Gupta - Java EE and GlassFish evangelist
- Luke Kowalski - VP in the corporate architecture group
- Henrique Leandro - MySQL Support Engineer
- Simon Ritter - Java Technology Evangelist
- Dave Stokes - MySQL Community Manager
- Dalibor Topic - Java F/OSS Ambassador
It's been a while since my last post on this blog; I definitely need to get back into the habit! One of the reasons for my radio silence was that I switched roles here at Oracle. After having been with the MySQL team for 9 years, I felt it was time for a change. Fortunately I did not have to look far – I'm now a member of the Oracle Linux product management team and I am having a lot of fun there.
However, I realized that while I was an active Linux user on the desktop, quite a lot has happened on the enterprise and data center side of things. Linux has really come a long way and I am glad to be back in this field, drinking from the firehose and learning a lot about recent developments and technologies. For me, this is kind of going "back to my roots", as I have been deeply involved with Linux at SuSE before I joined MySQL in 2002.
Anyway, I'm still alive and you can expect to hear more about Linux and less about MySQL from me on this blog in the future. I also started writing for the official Oracle Linux Blog as well as the OTN Garage blog – watch these spaces for future posts from me, too.
In addition to that, my travel schedule is also filling up again: at the end of this month I'll be speaking at the fisl12 conference in Brasil and Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco later this year. I also submitted talk proposals to the DOAG conference and the UKOUG conference. Looking forward to it!
Thursday, April 28. 2011
The folks at OTN have been very busy — among many others (both virtual and in RL), there are two upcoming developer/sysadmin days about MySQL and Solaris. Both will take place in California next month:
- On Tuesday, May 03, 2011, 8:00am to 4:00 pm, there will be the OTN Developer Day for MySQL in the Oracle Santa Clara Agnews Campus Auditorium. It will cover application development with MySQL, performance tuning tips and managing MySQL environments.
- On Tuesday, May 17, 2011, 8:00 am to 4:00 pm, the OTN's first Sys Admin Day for Oracle Solaris will take place in the Hyatt Regency La Jolla at Aventine in San Diego, CA. Topics include ZFS, security and virtualization using Solaris zones.
Admissions to these events are free and space is limited — so make sure to register fast!
Tuesday, January 25. 2011
Just a quick reminder: the Oracle user groups of Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Russia are organizing a joint conference, the Harmony. It will take place on May 19th-20th in Helsinki, Finland. I've met the organizers at the IOUC summit that took place at the Oracle HQ this week and they would love to have some more MySQL content. So if you have an idea for a talk about a MySQL-related topic, please submit it! The call for papers closes on February, 1st!
Friday, December 3. 2010
As part of the upcoming Oracle OpenWorld/Java One in São Paulo, Brazil next week (which will also include MySQL-related sessions), there will be a free MySQL Community event, which will take place on December 8th, from 13:00-18:00.
Here's the (translated and abbreviated) description from the events page:
Oracle invites you to attend the MySQL Community Forum! Don't miss an evening filled with technical sessions led by engineers and leaders of the MySQL open source community. You will have the opportunity to learn more about MySQL, Glassfish and what innovations to expect from MySQL 5.5.
This free forum is open for members of the MySQL and Open Source community interested in knowing how small and large companies use MySQL and how they take advantage of our solutions.
Choose from five highly technical sessions with well-known speakers, covering topics such as: MySQL Cluster, High Availability, Replication Tools, MySQL and GlassFish. See how Ricardo Eletro.com are using MySQL to achieve high levels of performance. Meet old friends and share your technical questions with the engineers of MySQL and Open Source community leaders. See how the GlassFish, NetBeans and MySQL work in perfect harmony. See what's new in the world of MySQL.
Sounds like a fun event to be at — if you're a MySQL user/enthusiast and you happen to be in the area, don't miss this! You can register for the event via phone or email to the contact information given on the page cited above.
Tuesday, November 16. 2010
It's finally official — please join me in welcoming my new/old colleague Dave Stokes, who just joined the MySQL Community Relations Team at Oracle as the new MySQL community manager for North America. Some of you may remember him from a previous stint at MySQL, where he was in charge of the MySQL certification program. Back then, he was already running the North Texas MySQL Users Group and a regular blogger on Planet MySQL. I am sure we will be seeing much more of these kind of activities from now on. So welcome aboard, Dave! I look forward to working with you.
Monday, November 8. 2010
I've been informed about two upcoming events/conferences that are organized by the independent Oracle user groups of the respective countries. If you're nearby, how about submitting a talk about a MySQL-related topic?

On March 29, 2011 the the Oracle Benelux User Group will have their yearly OBUG Benelux Connect 2011 conference, which will take place in Brussels, Belgium. You can submit your proposal until December 3rd, 2010 via this link.

On May 19th and 20th, 2011, the Oracle User Group Finland together with the Oracle User Groups of Estonia, Latvia and Russia will organize the EMEA Harmony 2011 Spring conference, which will take place in Helsinki, Finland. The Call for Papers has been opened — you can submit your speaking proposals until February 1st, 2011 via this submission form.
And while we're at it: the MySQL Developer room at FOSDEM 2011 in Brussels is still seeking for more talk proposals, too! Please consider submitting your suggested talk until Sunday, 26th of December, 2010
Thursday, October 28. 2010

The UK Oracle User Group (UKOUG) is an independent non-profit organisation of users of Oracle products in the UK, which organizes over 80 events per year all across the UK and Ireland. They have more that 15.000 members and were established over 25 years ago. Currently, they are in the final stretch of the preparations for their annual Technology & E-Business Conference, which will take place from November, 29th - December, 1st in Birmingham (UK).
For the first time, the conference will host a dedicated stream of presentations related to MySQL, which is scheduled for Wednesday (Dec. 1st). Targeted at database administrators, developers as well as users new to MySQL, there will be presentations from well-known speakers and participants of the MySQL community as well as members of the MySQL Team at Oracle.
Attendees will learn about best practices and gain valuable insight into the MySQL Server and related applications and tools.
Highlights include a keynote about the Oracle strategy and plans for MySQL by Richard Mason, Vice President of MySQL Sales and Consulting at Oracle, talks about High Availability with MySQL and MySQL Cluster as well as InnoDB Performance Tuning best practices. Other sessions will cover related products and projects from the MySQL ecosystem, that help to make the most of MySQL. See the full agenda on the conference web site for details and speaker information.
Registration for the event is still open. Get your tickets now!
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